Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination - Tajfel (1970)

Think of a group that you are a part of. You may support a football team, listen to a certain type of music, or speak a certain language. Humans love feeling like they are part of groups, we are a naturally social species after all, but being in a group can also lead to us looking differently at people who are not in our group. Henri Tajfel showed just how easy it is for discrimination to occur.

Jane Elliot's famous classroom experiments on predjudice and discrimination. I tried this once on a Year 10 class, but they saw through it!

Understanding the matrix

The hardest part about this study is the use of matrices to measure the levels of discrimination. Below is an example of a matrix used in the study.

Boy 1 has a choice here. If he chooses the highest amount for his own team (the column on the far right), the other group will get even more points. If he wanted to help both teams, it would also be obvious to pick the far right column. These strategies would be giving the largest reward to the in-groupand maximum joint profitrespectively. On the other hand, if he wants to make sure that his team just does better than the other group, he would pick one of the left hand columns, choosing maximising the difference. See the picture below:

Tajfel is therefore able to study the motivations of the boys very clearly. Are they just trying to help their group do well, or are they actively competing against the other group?

Big Issue - Ethnocentric bias

Tajfel's experiments took place on teenage boys in the UK in the late 1960s. Might there be any problems with generalising the results of this study?

Look at the cartoon on the right. What point is it trying to make?

Ethnocentric bias is the tendency to interpret behaviour from the viewpoint of our own culture. What's normal for us is assumed to be normal for everyone, but this may not be true.

Problems with Ethnocentric bias in research:

It is very hard to get a sample that is representative of all cultures!

It is very expensive and time consuming to study different cultures

Cross-cultural studies are difficult to conduct as researchers will already be ethnocentrically biased! They may not be objective.

Most samples for Psychology experiments are WEIRD! That stands for White, Educated (they are often college students), Industrialised (from Industrialised countries), Rich (often middle-class, and from relatively rich countries) and Democratic (from Democratic countries). But most people in the world are not like that! This could mean that most Psychology research that is published is not relevant to most of the population! Read this review for more.

At its worst, ethnocentric bias can lead to predjudice, discrimination and even genocide. Hitler, for example, used biased 'science' to support his ideas of Aryan supremacy.

Assignment 1 - Paper 1 short questions

Have a go at the short questions below, all taken from past exam papers. Submit your answers through the form on the home page.

Extension

Ethnocentrically biased IQ tests were for a long time used to 'prove' that African-Americans were less intelligent than white Americans. Even today no test has been created which is not in some way culturally biased. This review will tell you more.